Turn 0 (1180AD): As always when starting up one of these succession games, I take some time to look around. A lot has changed since I last ran a turnset, and we've broken out of our stalemate lines to go rampaging through France. I'll start by signing peace with Napoleon:
Why yes, that is 9000 gold that France is willing to grant us for peace, and he'll throw in the city of Marseilles in the deal too. I take it. Marseillies is located to the southwest of Paris, along with a couple of other French cities. We should probably raze and replace this city, but at this point, does it really matter? I'll just puppet it and leave it alone. (Possible bug: I used the "View City" feature after puppeting, and just looking at the city increased unhappiness by 5. Did the game interpret that as annexing the city? Have to test this again to see.) France has exactly 4 cities left, spread out all over the map, and is completely finished as a great power.
I now have 8600 gold and +300gpt, so I may as well put that to good use. There are still a couple of knights that were left unupgraded, so I turn them into cavalry. Kudos to our previous players for revealing so much of the map via Open Borders in Egypt/Siam territory. Start healing with our victorious units from the French campaign. No one is allied with cultural Vienna, so 1000 gold gets us another 20 culture/turn plus city visibility and another ally in any future war. For some reason, they only go to "Friend" status despite us having 125 influence. Ummm... never seen this before. Is that a bug? Vienna is not allied with anyone else. What's going on here (?) If this is an intended design feature, I've never seen it explained or documented anywhere.
Our military consists of 5 artillery, 2 cavs + 1 sipahi, and 7 rifles, most of them upgraded from janissaries. Given our ridiculous income, I'm going to purchase a couple more artillery in Edirne (our barracks + armory city) just because they are our best unit at the moment. I'll leave us with 3000 gold in the bank, which should be more than enough...
Some minor micromanagement of cities, and we should be good to go. For some weird reason, the game seems to take a different path through our cities every time I get a new save. Weird. Anyway, I want more settlers to continue our city spam!
Turn 1 (1190AD): Watch Greece somehow continuing to fight off more Siam units with hoplites. Impressive to see, although I don't think Greece will hold out for too much longer. We get a gazillion "We Love the King Day" messages as a result of France's luxuries. Purchase a colosseum in one of our innumberable little cities to deal with our -2 unhappiness. (We can purchase a colosseum every other turn with our base income alone now.) Also get a billion "trade route connected" messages, good to know I guess. Mostly just healing units and moving them into positions north near the Aztecs.
Turn 2 (1200AD): Watch two hoplites combined to take down a Siamese psycophant. It's just like the movie 300! We complete Himeji Castle; I go ahead and queue up Chichen Itza next. No clue if we'll actually get it, but may as well make the attempt. We discover Navigation and start Scientific Theory (1430 beakers), which is a pretty good 4 turn fit for us at our current rate of 424 beakers/turn. Siamese units are flooding into our territory, due to that ridiculous Open Borders bug. It's pretty absurd that the AI can just walk through our territory, and there's literally nothing we can do about it, short of declaring war and physically killing them. French and Aztec units continue to do some fighting near our borders; Montezmua still ranks #1 in power, a little above us.
Turn 3 (1210AD): Lhasa apparently requested that we build Himeji Castle, as we gain more free influence with them. That's.... random. Feels to me like the whole city state "quest" thing could have used a little more thought and planning.
Turn 4 (1220AD): Siam completes Chichen Itza; oh well, not much production lost. I set our capital to work on Big Ben, although there's a good chance we won't land that one either. Not a big deal either way. In a shining example of Civ5 diplomacy, Napoleon (the guy we just fought a gigantic war against) pops up and asks us to join him in war against Alexander, who is located on the other side of the world, with no cities within a thousand miles. France and Greece are the two minnows of this continent, and France immediately wants to go attack Greece mere turns after signing a crippling peace treaty. Uh huh. Brilliant, just brilliant.
Am planning to declare war on Aztecs next turn, now that our units are reassigned.
Turn 5 (1230AD): We get another Great Scientist, giving us two on hand. Let's save them for the moment; infantry is coming soon anyway, and once we have a third Great Scientist (in 19 turns) we can pop all three to slingshot Electricity + Telegraph + Electronics. We'll jump very quickly from infantry to mechs, and upgraded 50 strength mechs with 4 movement should crush any remaining resistance.
Go ahead and declare war on Montezuma, who is already at war with Siam. I would feel bad about this, if Montezuma wasn't "Hostile" against us, for about the eighteenth time this game. Kill a rifle and spear, while shifting units for their upcoming attack next turn. Have to kill a lot of units before we can make any forward advance.
Incidentally, I have spent ages and ages already searching for my Great Generals, which can be tough to spot on the map. Clicking on the unit's name on the F3 unit list does NOT zoom to the unit, which is unbelievably frustrating. So I know that I have 3 Great Generals, but finding them is entirely up to me. Not much fun... this really would be a nice fix, especially on large/busy maps.
Turn 6 (1240AD): Scientific Theory discovered, Archaeology next (3t research with minimal wastage). We have plenty of coal, although it will have to be mined first. The Aztecs moved a lot of units around, but didn't attack us anywhere. Mostly pointless shuffling of units. This took the cake:
This rifle could have attacked our city; it was two tiles west of Diyarbakir last turn. But instead of attacking the city, it chose to embark itself into the water, right next to the city itself. Simply unbelievable...
By the way, five different cities can bombard enemy units, another reason why spamming cities so close to one another is an effective tactic. Kill lots of enemy units. Units from Siam and France are gunking up the path forward in some places; have to be careful that Siam doesn't capture any of these cities!
Turn 7 (1250AD): Lots of Siam vs Aztecs combat on the interturn; Siam seems to be winning most of the fights, although their units will likely get wiped out on Monty's counterattack, now that they've moved deep into Aztec territory like a bunch of idiots. Aztecs still embarking units in an insane tactical display along our north coast. Kill more enemy units. The actual military push is going to go through Brussels first and then roll up the enemy flank from the south. Aztecs have also dropped out of the #1 position in Power ranking, which we now occupy.
Turn 8 (1260AD): Now that the Siamese units can't capture the city, I use my artillery to bombard the defenses of Brussels. Two shots leaves it completely undefended. Yeah, artillery are really unstoppable in this game. Rifles and cavs move into position to capture it next turn (finally crossing the river now that the defending units are all gone).
Turn 9 (1270AD): Archaelogy discovered, Steam Power next due in 4t with minimal overflow. Somehow, all of the Siamese rifles managed to turn themselves into infantry between turns. That wouldn't be so remarkable if it hadn't happened outside Siam's cultural borders!
Huh?! Pretty sure you have to be within your own borders to upgrade units. Does that rule not apply to the AI now? Well, we take Brussels back from Monty:
I choose to liberate the city, to get the free culture. More useful than puppeting, that's for sure. Now check out that Siamese infantry. You can see it's in the territory of Brussels. How in the world did this unit upgrade between turns?! Makes absolutely no sense. Anyway, those assorted units around Brussels might look dangerous, but they really aren't. The ones north of the river are blocked from attacking anyway, and our artillery blasts away the musket and redlines the rifle. The only danger is if Brussels is taken on the Aztec turn, which might possibly happen, and even that would only cost us a single unit. I'll have a road across the river next turn and can start moving up the artillery further - yay for combat workers! Would be even more fun if I could just group them together, to place a road instantly in one turn...
Turn 10 (1280AD): Montezuma continues to shuffle around his units without really attacking or doing anything. In response, I continue to massacre his units in large numbers. Point artillery, fire, lots of dead stuff. Siam actually signed peace with the Aztecs on the interturn, although the game actually didn't display this message. Instead, it displayed all of Siam's city state allies signing peace with Montezuma. That notification system seems a bit clunky at the moment... No mention of a major shift in global politics, but it seems to feel that it's incredibly important to tell me that Lhasa wants us to produce a Great Merchant. Thanks.
One other weird thing: I can't be 100% sure of this, but I think one of our rifles disappeared when we liberated Brussels. I couldn't find the actual rifle that captured the city anywhere afterwards. Maybe it was shifted to a different tile or something (we have a lot of rifles in the area), but I never saw one of our units inside the city itself, where one should have been after capture. Is this yet another bug (?)
Turn 11 (1290AD): Kill more Aztec units. Monty is starting to look gassed, which isn't surprising given the massive number of units that he's lost. Artillery slowly pushing forward on every front. Calix will be the next city to fall, will already be in firing range next turn.
Turn 12 (1300AD): Do the same thing as every other turn, kill more Aztec units. It's a bit amazing just how many units the AI can churn out on Deity, and how utterly useless they prove to be. I'd like to hand off the turn here, but I'm pretty sure I can take Calix next turn, and it will involve more precise unit moves than I'm willing to describe. So I'm going to take just the first part of one more turn to try and get that city.
Turn 13 (1310AD): Well that worked just as well as expected:
Got the city and cleaned up all of the units surrounding it too, without losses. I had to fire seven different artilley pieces together (several of them moving along roads just built by workers before firing) and move our cav unit around a zone of control to get the city. Apologies for going over an extra turn, but I didn't want to pass off the save in that state. Now we have a turn or two of repositioning before the next attack, which should give luddite a chance to see where everything is again.
